Introduction

The following three-chapter arc was originally intended to be part of a book project called “The Way of Men.” The Way of Men is not about feminism, but most popular writing about masculinity is written by feminists, or men who have accepted a handful of feminist assumptions. My intent here was to locate my own understanding of masculinity within the context of a larger discussion about men that has been happening for the past several decades. I wanted to engage the arguments of others in a comprehensive way and extract common themes. I wanted to “show my work.”

Together, these chapters form a short book about the way that masculinity has been maligned, re-imagined and mis-represented by others.

I have decided to make this book No Man’s Land available for free online, because I hope that this material will be useful to other men who are writing about masculinity, feminism, the men’s movement and conflicts between masculinity and civilization. While I have a stack of books on masculinity that come from the establishment—from university presses and from writers approved by the mainstream media—the most interesting writing about masculinity is happening online. You can cite a book, but you can’t quite link to it—not exactly, anyway.

For those inclined to read No Man’s Land as a book, I have made it available in Kindle format, and as a downloadable .pdf file, but it will also remain online as a series of pages on my web site.

I would like to thank my Vulcan friend Trevor Blake for his help editing these chapters.

One last thing…

I’m not a tenured academic. I drive a truck for a living. Sorting through this material takes a lot of work. If you find this valuable and want to support my work — toss me a few bucks for beer, guns and books. There’s a “donate” button on my web site.